The "Story of my sweet Helen". Une peinture pour "Connoisseur" par Gavin Hamilton

• Autores: Guillaume Faroult
• Localización: Revue de l'art, ISSN 0035-1326, Nº. 183, 2014, págs. 37-46
• Idioma: francés
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• Resumen

  • The "Story of my sweet Helen". A painting for connoisseur by Gavin Hamilton.

    In 2011, the Louvre acquire a large, unpublished painting bay the Scotch painter Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798), "Venus presenting Helen to Paris". The artist, who spent the most important part of his carrer in Rome, where he settled after 1756, was a pioneer of the European Neoclassical movement. At the same time that developed his main activities of archeologist and art dealer, he produced a small number of large canvases illustrating Antique subjects, intended for a British clientele. During the 1770s, he cherished the project of realizing a set of six large paintings illustrating the story of Paris and Helen for the decoration of a gallery in Lansdowne House, the immense residence that William Petty-Fitzmaurice (1737-1805), Earl of Shelburne, had just had embellished in London by Robert Adam. The project was mentioned in the correspondence of the artist in 1772, but it was actually in 1777 that Gavin Hamilton became more insistent, unfortunately without success. The very large canvas now in the Louvre, undoubtedly painted between 1777 and 1780 was probably the unique painting to be realized that was tied to this abortive project. As a next step, but still without success, it is possible that Hamilton had thought about proposing it to the same collector as the pendant to a version of one of his most famous compositions, the "Death of Lucretia" (New Haven, Yale Center for British Art). The painting remained in the artist's studio and sold at auction in London, after his death in 1799.

    Beginning in 1782, Hamilton painted another, fairly different version of this composition for the decoration of the Casino of the Villa Borghese in Rome, in the "Sala di Paride ed Helena", prestigious commission of the Prince Marcantonio Borghese (1730-1800).